Thursday, November 29, 2012

I was going through some old pics in iPhoto this week trying to make some space on my very full computer. I found this pic of PB when he was about 2 months old. He is lounging in our very large, round, orange chair. It is filled with foam. We used to have it upstairs in our living room but it has found a new home in the basement.

It is large, that blue ball is an exercise ball. After our basement is complete, it will be the only seating down there for a little while.

But this is really why I wanted to share the orange blob this week. I came across this video of me and PB playing peek a boo.

He is 5 months in the video.

Tomorrow I will be 28 weeks pregnant and I will admit that I am starting to freak out a little. This pregnancy has gone by so fast and we aren't ready to bring this baby home. PB still needs to move over to a big boy room and then we have to get the nursery ready. I think I will feel better once we get some furniture home for PB's big boy room. Even if it is just in the garage and not set up yet, I will feel better. But right now I feel overwhelmed. We don't have a good list of names yet. We are struggling with boy names and I have a feeling this is a boy. I also haven't sewn anything for this baby. So every week that ticks by and I have nothing accomplished feels really scary. I know I won't get anything done this weekend because we have to get ready for the carpet to be installed in the basement. But hopefully we will get to IKEA next week and will start collecting things. Maybe if I focus on sewing and decorating for Christmas I will feel a little better. Thanks for letting me be a Debbie Downer on a Friday.

I do have to share the pile of stuff I picked up at Joann Fabrics on Black Friday. I'll try to get that ready to share early next week. I hope you all have a great weekend!!!

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

We made some major progress on the basement this weekend.
On Friday after I did some Black Friday shopping with my BFF, B, my Mom and I went down and got my craft area all cleared and taped. My mom taped the rest of the room over the past few days. She is awesome. I couldn't have stood on that ladder and taped.

Hubby worked on his space in the afternoon. So this was all of it before it was cleared out some. To prepare painting Hubby and my mom moved a bunch of stuff from the basement and took the railings down in the stairwell.

We painted the room Olympic's Gray Ghost from Lowes. We chose the paint and primer in one that was Low VOC in a flat finish. I thought the big 5 gallon bucket would be enough for this space and most of our bedroom. We have less than a half gallon left, so it looks like we bought the right amount for the room. The three of us painted the whole room and the stairway all day Saturday. We painted the stairway ceiling the same color as the walls. I am glad we made the push and all worked hard to get the room done in one day.

Here is the room after we painted:

All of the craft shelves went back up and we left the desks there temporarily. Hubby works from home so he can't take that down until next weekend. Our carpet is being installed on Monday.

This is the pile that has to be moved to the garage. You can also see the doors here are white, my Mom painted them. It is Olympic's Ultra White paint from Lowes. That one you can just buy off the shelf. The doors were unfinished wood. Really makes the room look more finished.

You can see most of the space here. Look at all that murder red carpet! Our large table is gone and so is a bunch of other furniture. My Mom called some guys to come pick it up. It was a relief to get rid of those things. Now we will be able to have a play space for PB. Hubby and I have been waiting for the day when legos will be in the house. We are going to make a lego station down here so the baby can't get into them.

My Mom spent all day Sunday painting doors and woodwork on the stairs. Here you get a better idea of the paint color. It is a soft grey that just warms the space up. I am the door and woodwork painter and if she wouldn't have take over that task, they never would have gotten done. She rocks!!

Sunday I pulled tape down and put some of my craft space back together. I was very sore on Sunday and could barely lift my legs. I definitely over did it painting that room on Saturday. I finally feel good today. I might be a little too pregnant to do this much of a project.

This week Hubby and I are going to get the baseboards and my Mom has offered to paint them on Sunday when we are at a family function for Hubby's side. We need to get that baseboard installed in the office area or it will never get done!!

We are far from finished. Now we need to get some furniture from IKEA. We are going to make a trip down there in the next 2 weeks to order it. I also have to order the furniture for PB's big boy room. I just figures out that I am in my 3rd trimester and I am starting to freak out. We barely have a list of names, and none of the rooms are ready. I know it will all come together, it is just a little overwhelming right now.

Friday, November 23, 2012

I had a little too much fun with cheese :) Cooking yesterday was awesome. A little tricky because of how pregnant I am but my Mom was a huge help. I also sat at the table to chop all the veggies and potatoes and that helped a lot.

My mom is the cutest!

We cooked a 20 pound turkey... for just my Mom, Hubby, PB and me. We have a ton of leftovers :) I also made 9 pounds of mashed potatoes. Did I go a little over board? Maybe. But I won't have to cook for the next 4 days! It's leftover time!!

My guys carved the turkey. It turned out perfect. My secret is a thermometer you stick into the turkey and then sounds an alarm when the turkey is done. Works every time.

PB loved the meal! So did everyone else :)

Right now I am out shopping with B, my crafty BFF. We go our shopping on Black Friday every year. We don't do the midnight thing though, we get up early. My list for Joanns is mighty. We are both shopping for fabric for our babies too!! B is pregnant and due a month after me!! I am so excited that we are having babies at the same time :)

I hope you all have a great weekend. I will be alternating painting walls and laying down :)

Thursday, November 22, 2012

PB and I made these turkeys the other night to decorate the table. We were watching Giada and she made them. PB is my little foodie who loves to watch the food network. He especially loves Paula Dean :)

I am thankful for so many things this year. I am so thankful my Mom has moved here and is staying with us until she finds a house. I am very thankful for the health of my family. I am thankful for this baby in my belly and for PB being such a fantastic, smily kid. I am so thankful to have such wonderful friends in my life. I am thankful to have this space to share and awesome readers. And I am most thankful for my wonderful husband who works so hard for our family. He is amazing and just the best partner in crime. I am looking forward to us having fun and being together this weekend even if the fun is us painting the basement.

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving! Good luck to all the cooks out there :)

Monday, November 19, 2012

The Cluttershark is here busting my butt to bust some clutter :) We are getting closer to having the basement ready for carpet. This project was supposed to be done a few weeks ago, but it is taking a little longer than we expected. Right now the carpet won't be installed until half way through December. Nothing like adding to the holiday stress :)

Here are the before pics. When I see those pics, I realize that we have gotten a ton done even through it doesn't feel like it. Thanks to my Mom we are much closer to painting and having the space cleared.

This weekend we spent 2 mornings in my craft area. We went through every box, every shelf and every container and changed things up a bit. We got rid of "weird" containers. That is my mom's way of saying ugly. So everything is in a plastic bin or a orange box and looks much more uniform. The few things that aren't in bins are display items or are my utensils. The way it looks in this pic, is not the final reveal. Everything has to be moved so we can paint the walls. So stuff will be put back right when we are done painting. There is more space on the shelves now and I am pretty excited about that.

I will admit that I had somethings on those shelves that made it through 2 reorganizing sessions. It was stuff I wasn't using but never got rid of it. Well, I got real and got rid of it. No more hoarding weird craft supplies.

Here is the rest of the room, just a few more things to be carried upstairs. I have been patching and sanding the walls. I just need to prime and we are ready to paint!! I think we have picked out the perfect grey for the walls and we just have to go pick it up!

I have to say that my Mom has been a huge help the last 2 weeks she has been staying with us. She is also super awesome and made a bunch of trips to goodwill for us. Although I still think she tricked me into getting rid of stuff and then quickly brought it to donate so I wouldn't have a chance to think about it :) Maybe that is the key to getting rid of stuff, you need someone to force you to get rid of it and then make it disappear.

Friday, November 16, 2012

The orange cravings are still going strong. I have blogged about my problembefore.

My new thing this week is dipping my grilled cheese sandwich in hot sauce. And not just any hot sauce...

A spicy tasty hot sauce. I am craving spicy lately, and it has to be set my mouth on fire spicy too. I saw this on the shelf at the store and the baby made me buy it and does crazy dances in my belly when I eat it. I have eaten it in a normal way like as a buffalo chicken sandwich. I have been tempted to drink it out of the bottle. I am pretty sure this sauce could make cardboard edible. Oh and I have had no heartburn so far and I got it like twice the first time. PB was super bald :) I am seriously lucky!

Frank's has no idea I am shouting from the mountain that I love this so much. But Frank, if you are out there, send me some sauce! The baby wants it!! I have been eating more orange food than I usually do, I am starting to think the baby might come out orange :)

The cluttershark (my mom) has been busting my butt to get some clutter busted this week :) It has been nice, and it definitely looks much better in here. She is always in clutter attack mode at my house. Probably because there is so much "chum in the water." I have lots of little clutter piles everywhere that just make the cluttershark crazy. We are also planning Thanksgiving day eats. We are going to do appetizer lunch and then the full dinner. I am close to finishing the advent calendar too! I made some major progress last night. I have also been browsing the Black Friday ads online and started my lists. I can't wait!!!

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

I am going to make a quilt for the baby. So I am going to make 2 piles of squares, one girl and one boy since we don't know what we are having. I also really want to get all the other fabric to finish the front of the quilt and get it all cut. Then once the baby is here, I can just pick the back fabric and the binding. I think I am going to go with grey and white again like I did for the one I made PB. But maybe change it up with the back a little bit and add some subtle color.

I am making this advent calendar from Skip to My Lou. I did some cutting over the weekend and got some sewing done this week. I just have to pick up some numbers from Michaels. I am excited that this project is going to finally get finished!!

I have enough left over that I can make some pillows using the orange Christmas fabric with it!! I hope I get to make those this year :)

Friday, November 9, 2012

Hubby and I went to Ireland a few years ago with his family. We picked up this beautiful blanket there. It is 70% mohair and 30% wool. I really wanted to get something there that was wool and unique but nothing was really our style. But one store had many modern options. It is a lap blanket. It doesn't get much use because it just isn't long enough for me to snuggle up with but hubby used it when we didn't have power. He said it was very warm.

I have the best news ever to share with you... MY MOM MOVED HERE THIS WEEK!!!! She got here Tuesday night and is staying with us until she finds a place. So if I am not so active on here it is because I am having too much fun with her. PB is so excited that she is here. He just wants to have Gammie time all day long and doesn't want me or my hubby around. It's funny.

I am working on a list of all the things I have to make for the holidays, for PB's big boy room and for the baby. It is going to be a long list. Hopefully I will get started on some things soon and will have lots to share. We are still slowly chugging away at our basement. The carpet guys aren't scheduled yet and we have yet to start patching and painting. So the project that we thought would be done before Thanksgiving won't be done until after. We did get our new backdoor installed this week, I need to make a new privacy screen for it. Here is the old one. I can't decide on a new design.

Monday, November 5, 2012

*this post is best viewed in your browser*
We made an emergency bag last year and prepped an emergency food area in our basement. Hurricane Sandy put our prep to the test. We live 20 minutes from the New Jersey border. We had 81 mph winds whipping around our house and were lucky to only lose power for a few days and have no damage to our house.
I felt like we were pretty well prepared, but there are a few things we are adding to the bag after this storm. I want to share with you all what is in our bag. These are all products my Hubby purchased and we are not being compensated in anyway. We also ordered just about everything off Amazon.com. I am not affiliated with them in anyway. We just think they rock!

This is a long post because my Hubby was very thorough in preparing us for an emergency. The best time to prepare for an emergency is now. Don't wait until the last minute to prepare.

Before the storm hit, we charged all our resuable batteries, our laptops, all electronics, and old cell phones for emergency calls. We got our cooler down from the shelf in the garage, filled our cars with gas and filled bathtubs with water. We also pushed all our heavy patio furniture next to the house and any light furniture went into the garage.

Here is our emergency bag:

It is my old school bag from college. It has lots of compartments and fits a ton of stuff! It also has backpack straps on the back. We keep it in our closet.

Here is what is in our bag:

Crank Radio, flashlight, cell phone charger in one, and it's solar powered too. At night in the dark, this was amazing. A minute crank gets you some serious listening time. We listened to NPR and I kept falling asleep. All their voices are so soothing and no matter how interesting it is, I fall right asleep every time.

Solar Powered USB Charger. You can plug this into the wall to get a full charge but just stick it into the window when you have no power to charge it back up. It also has a reading light. I used it to charge my iPhone, it worked!

Max Craft LED Work Light
We have 2 in our emergency bag and one that we use all the time in our garage. It can shine a big light out the front or a smaller light out the bottom. The handy hook means you can hook it to your shirt when you are carrying things into a dark garage like the trash. When you do this you look and feel like Iron Man, it's awesome. It also has a magnet on the back.

Adventure First Aid Kit, 4 Sporks, Orange Rope, small orange umbrella, 2 reusable water bottles
So many orange things!! I recommend getting orange gear, not just because it is the best color, but because it is easy to find. Well, if everything in your house is orange, it isn't that easy to find :)Thermal Blankets and batteries. Get the size batteries that your electronics and flashlights use. We need to add D batteries to our bag.Local Map book and Important Document pouch.
We have a list of our food items and other important documents like copies of our birth certificates. We also have a small amount of money in a zip top bag hidden inside the emergency bag.
Bag of soap, shampoo, conditioner, toothpaste and combs. They were all taken from hotels :)Water Purifier with manual, toothbrushes, and survival manual. Hubby had this book already. I think he really wants to be MacGyver. Water purifier might seem excessive but we had a boil advisory for a few days in our area before we made the bag. That made us decide to get one.
Our bag holds a ton of stuff and can be used at home or can be grabbed to go in a hurry.Now for the rest:Gas stove. We could not have survived without our stove. I cooked our meals and heated water. We have 2 grills and one has a side burner, but when the weather was bad, we didn't want to be outside grilling our food. Make sure you have a long lighter or some matches or you can't use your stove!

We have 2 large pots that were great for heating water. We only have 2 small pots for heating canned food and there are 3, soon to be 4, of us. I might pick up another small pot.

Large cooler. I prepared "go bags" in our fridge and freezer before the storm hit. I had butter, cheese, a small container of milk, leftover chili, yogurt, and a few other things in plastic bags on the bottom shelf of the fridge. All of our reusable ice packs and a few large frozen bottles were in the freezer bags. When the power went out at midnight, we quick grabbed the bags out and packed the cooler. I stuck 2 frozen juice bottles full of water in the fridge. We debated buying ice before the storm but we just bought it the next day. Stores were giving out 2 free bags of ice a day and water to people without power. It was really nice.

Food:
We have cans of soup, beans, sardines, tuna, raman noodles, and fruit cups. We also have rice, almonds, popcorn, granola bars, pancake mix, and crackers. We store these in our basement with some gallon jugs of water. We always have peanut butter, pasta and jar sauce in our pantry. My Hubby has a master list of food in Evernote and he put a printed copy in our emergency bag. I also bought a few last minute things like cheese curls, 2 loaves of bread and extra granola bars. Chocolate should be on the list too, luckily we had trick or treat this weekend, so we were covered!

-Flashlight for PB- He wanted his own flashlight and really bugged us about it :)
-We had no way to heat our house so we are thinking about a kerosene heater
-We are also debating a generator.
-We need to add duct tape to the bag and a large plastic tarp.

I should have quick done 2 loads of laundry the day before. I have enough regular clothes to make it through 2 weeks easy, but not maternity clothes. I was lucky my sweatpants and sweatshirts still fit.

Do you think we are missing anything? What would you add? We want to be well prepared so if you think we are missing something, please let us know!
i linked up:

Friday, November 2, 2012

So those cheese curls that I bought in storm preparation. Best. Idea. Ever.

Those cheese curls look like mouths! I took this picture when I was seriously losing my mind. We had just checked into a hotel, I am wearing no makeup, and PB had been talking for the last hour straight. But right after I took this pic and sent it to be a blog post, we got our power back!! So while this pic is a little bit humiliating, It really kinda says everything you need to know about me. I'm crazy pants. Maybe that never came through on here before.

So we are in our home and we feel so lucky that we have power finally and that there was really no damage to our house. Just a leaky window. I did have to throw away everything in the fridge and freezer. But here is the bright side, most of that food was on it's way out anyway. So maybe Sandy did me a small favor in making me clean the fridge and freezer, it did really need to be done. My BFF lives down my street and she still doesn't have power. Actually the houses across the street from me don't have power either. It is a strange sight because it is the same neighborhood. So many other people still don't have power either. And so many people have had horrific damage to their homes so I know how lucky we are.

This week has tested my patience. Specifically with PB because he just loves to push all my buttons at once and school was closed all week. My hubby is wonderful and really prepared us for this storm. (I am seriously working on a post of the things that got us through.) This week has also made me so grateful. We are all healthy and have a home to live in. While we didn't have power, I tried to make it a home with hot meals. This week has also taught me that while I can cook many things, box mac and cheese is not one of them. Now that we are back with power, I am catching up on all the news I missed. The images are just heartbreaking. My thoughts and hugs go out to all the people that have felt the worst from this storm.

Hi, my name is Kris. Welcome to everywhere orange! I'm a high school art teacher taking a break to be at home with my 5 and 1 year old sons. I have always enjoyed crafting and cooking, but in the last 5 years at home I finally had the time to really explore new things in the kitchen and focus on my craftiness at home. The color orange and I go way back, long before I met my husband 16.5 years ago. I wanted a place I could share recipes and the crafty things I make and some orange. Thanks for stopping by!!